Cape Town household conditions 2026: what the survey data reveals
In 2024, the City of Cape Town surveyed 8,318 households across 407 suburbs. The results are now published on StreetSignal as part of each suburb’s profile. The picture they paint is not of a single city but of many cities sharing one municipal boundary.
Adult food insecurity ranges from zero in 143 suburbs to 46.2% in Mfuleni. Home internet connectivity ranges from 2.8% in Kuyasa to 100% in suburbs like Clovelly and Llandudno. These are not outliers in the statistical sense - they are the structural endpoints of a distribution shaped by decades of spatial planning that concentrated poverty and concentrated privilege in different parts of the same metro.
A note on data: All household figures in this post come from the City of Cape Town’s 2024 Household Survey, published under CCT Open Data Policy 27781. StreetSignal publishes only aggregated suburb-level statistics. No individual household responses are exposed.
Food security: the Engel coefficient
The Engel coefficient measures the share of total household expenditure spent on food. Economists use it as a poverty proxy: the higher the food share, the less discretionary income a household has. Across 407 suburbs with expenditure data, StreetSignal computes the Engel coefficient from seven expenditure categories (food, accommodation, transport, energy, education, debt, and saving).
The city-wide median Engel coefficient is 35.3%. Four suburbs exceed 40%:
| Suburb | Engel coefficient | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Wesbank | 49.9% | Nearly half of household spending goes to food |
| Tafelsig | 43.6% | High food share combined with 31.6% adult food insecurity |
| Bonteheuwel | 43.5% | Cape Flats community with deep apartheid-era roots |
| Lwandle | 40.5% | Former migrant labour hostel area |
Source: City of Cape Town Household Survey 2024. Engel coefficient computed from reported expenditure categories.
At the other end, suburbs like Eversdal Heights (5.7%) and Firgrove Rural (5.9%) spend less than 6% of household budgets on food. The 44-percentage-point gap between Wesbank and Eversdal Heights is not a lifestyle difference - it is a structural inequality in household economic capacity.
Adult food insecurity
The survey asks directly whether adults in the household experienced food insecurity in the past 12 months. This is not a proxy measure - it is a self-reported deprivation indicator.
The ten suburbs with the highest adult food insecurity rates:
| Suburb | Adult food insecurity |
|---|---|
| Mfuleni | 46.2% |
| Lwandle | 44.5% |
| Ilitha Park | 40.3% |
| Pelikan Heights | 35.7% |
| Pelikan Park | 35.7% |
| Tafelsig | 31.6% |
| Eyethu | 31.0% |
| Khaya | 31.0% |
| Delft South | 30.5% |
| Philippi | 30.2% |
Source: City of Cape Town Household Survey 2024.
The geography of food insecurity extends into parts of the inner city. Woodstock and Salt River - both undergoing significant gentrification pressure - record adult food insecurity rates that reflect the displacement of lower-income households into increasingly expensive rental markets. Bishop Lavis on the Cape Flats sits among the highest food insecurity suburbs in the dataset, a legacy of its origins as a coloured group area under apartheid zoning that created distance from employment centres without the infrastructure investment to compensate.
In Mfuleni, nearly one in two adults reported food insecurity. These suburbs are located primarily on the Cape Flats and in peri-urban areas - communities established or expanded under apartheid-era forced removals and post-apartheid urbanisation, where household incomes remain structurally constrained by distance from economic centres, limited transport infrastructure, and intergenerational poverty.
One hundred and forty-three suburbs reported zero adult food insecurity. The boundary between these two realities can be as narrow as a single road.
Digital inclusion: home internet
The survey records whether households have a home internet connection (fibre or ADSL - not mobile data). This is a meaningful distinction: fibre-connected households have access to remote work, online education, and digital services that mobile-only households typically do not.
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Suburbs at 100% home internet | 5+ (including Clovelly, Kirstenhof, Llandudno) |
| Suburbs below 10% | 5 (including Kuyasa at 2.8%, Silvertown at 4.1%) |
| Lowest | Kuyasa at 2.8% |
Source: City of Cape Town Household Survey 2024.
The digital divide in Cape Town is not closing. It maps almost perfectly onto the spatial inequality laid down by Group Areas Act zoning: suburbs that were designated for white residents under apartheid have near-universal fibre coverage, while townships and informal settlements remain overwhelmingly dependent on mobile data. This has direct consequences for educational outcomes, employment access, and municipal service interaction.
Environmental risk: flooding
The survey asks whether households experienced flooding in the past 12 months. The results identify clear geographic clusters of vulnerability:
| Suburb | Flooding exposure |
|---|---|
| Kraaifontein East | 63.5% |
| Nonqubela | 39.8% |
| Joe Slovo Park | 39.2% |
| Philippi | 39.1% |
| Lwandle | 36.1% |
| Wallacedene | 34.1% |
| Endlovini | 33.7% |
| Enkanini | 33.7% |
Source: City of Cape Town Household Survey 2024.
Nearly two-thirds of households in Kraaifontein East reported flooding. These are not suburbs that chose flood-prone locations - they are communities established on marginal land because apartheid-era and post-apartheid housing allocation placed them there. Flooding risk in Cape Town is not an environmental problem in isolation. It is a spatial planning inheritance.
Multidimensional deprivation
StreetSignal computes a deprivation breadth score: the number of dimensions (out of eight) where a suburb’s deprivation rate exceeds 15%. The eight dimensions span income, housing, health, education, digital access, food security, environmental risk, and service delivery.
Five suburbs score 8 out of 8 - reporting material stress across every measured dimension:
By contrast, 219 suburbs score zero - no deprivation above 15% on any dimension. The distribution is bimodal: Cape Town’s suburbs cluster at the extremes rather than forming a smooth gradient.
What this means
The household survey data makes several things visible that property listings and estate agent summaries do not:
Food insecurity and housing costs co-occur. Suburbs with the highest Engel coefficients also report the highest adult food insecurity rates. This is not coincidence - it is the arithmetic of poverty: when food consumes half of household spending, there is nothing left for housing quality, education, or savings.
Digital exclusion compounds other deprivations. Suburbs with low internet connectivity are the same suburbs with high food insecurity, high flooding, and low educational outcomes. The digital divide is not a standalone problem - it amplifies every other barrier.
Environmental risk is spatially inherited. Flooding does not follow rainfall patterns. It follows where people were placed by planning decisions made decades ago. The suburbs with the highest flood exposure are the same suburbs with the weakest drainage infrastructure and the least capacity to recover.
Each of the 407 suburb profiles on StreetSignal now includes this household conditions data alongside safety, property values, and educational landscape - providing a more complete picture of what it means to live in a neighbourhood than any single metric can offer. For how these conditions intersect with educational outcomes, see what the matric results show. For the safety landscape, see what the crime data actually shows.
Methodology note
All household figures are from the City of Cape Town’s 2024 Household Survey (8,318 households across 407 suburbs), published under CCT Open Data Policy 27781. The Engel coefficient is computed by StreetSignal from seven reported expenditure categories: food, accommodation, transport, energy, education, debt, and saving.
Deprivation breadth counts dimensions exceeding 15% across eight indicators. Only aggregated suburb-level statistics are published - no individual household data is exposed. Full methodology is on the StreetSignal methodology page.
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